


Anything You Need

by penlex



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Blindness, Canon Disabled Character, Cuddles, F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, No one else understands, Sleeping in a Tent, giftfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penlex/pseuds/penlex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Toph finds herself blind and lost in the sandbenders' domain, Katara gives her a hand. Toph gets attached.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything You Need

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday present for a friend.

Everything was fuzzy and blurred. It was like there was thick wool all around her, blocking all of her senses. Sokka said something, somewhere. She couldn’t tell which direction he was in. Was he close? Far away? She stumbled.

The sand was hot and rough; she could at least tell that. She was very glad her feet were calloused and rough from so much barefoot walking, or they’d burn, blister, and tear. And then she’d really be in trouble.

Not that she wasn’t in trouble anyway. Stumbling around like she was blind. Because she was blind.

Toph had spent all of her time with Aang, Katara, and Sokka convincing them she wasn’t handicapped. They’d gotten used to it now, and easily left her to fend for herself in the static-y expanse of desert. They didn’t think she needed their help, and her pride wouldn’t let her ask for it.

There was some sort of movement to her right, and Toph tensed. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t see!

A soft hand slipped into hers and squeezed gently.

“C’mon, Toph,” Katara said, sounding for all the world like she just wanted to assure Toph would not wander off on her own. She pulled on Toph’s hand, and Toph gratefully followed her.

Katara led Toph all the night’s long walk, and by the time they were setting up a camp to sleep through the hot day Toph felt dependent on her. Katara seemed to sense it.

“Okay, boys’ tent and girls’ tent, got it?” she directed. There was mumbled assent from Sokka and angsty silence from Aang. Katara did a swell job of ignoring the both of them, and Toph clung to her tightly as she moved away.

The sleek floor of the tent was slippery and cool compared to the sand outside, and the atmosphere inside felt soft and comfortable. Toph wasn’t used to soft things.

“Get ready for bed, Toph,” Katara told her quietly. She sounded so tired. Haltingly, Toph thanked her for being her eyes for the day. There was a pause in sound and movement, and Toph guessed Katara might be smiling.

“Don’t thank me,” the waterbender murmured. “You needed me.” She said it like it was the simplest thing in the world, and Toph stubbornly turned her face away from Katara’s voice. It wasn’t simple, and it wasn’t easy.

“I don’t need anything from anybody,” she argued.

“You needed me,” insisted Katara. “C’mon. Get ready for bed.”

Toph didn’t have much getting ready to do. She took her hair down, took her outer layers of clothing off, and plopped down on the ground.

“Don’t you want to brush your teeth?” Katara asked with a slight overtone of reproach.

“We’re roughin’ it, Sugar Queen,” Toph replied. She closed her unseeing eyes and tried not to notice that it made absolutely no difference to her.

Katara held Toph’s hand the next night too. Her hand was warm and soft, with smooth skin and no calluses. Her nails were sudden hard spots at the end of her fingers. Toph held on tightly.

Halfway through the night, Sokka asked what they were holding hands for.

“You’re just jealous _you_ don’t get to hold my hand, Snoozles,” Toph answered quickly. She took a step closer to Katara, hoping silently that only the waterbender would notice the brief moment of self-consciousness.

They slept in the same tent again. Toph was distractingly in tune with Katara’s body heat, lower but closer than the heat of the desert sun outside the tent. The odd feeling kept her up all day, and when night came and they set out again, Toph was so tired that she kept her eyes closed as they walked, surrendering trust completely over to Katara to lead the way.

Toph quickly got used to Katara’s daytime proximity, and slept well again. Even so, she continued to keep her eyes shut when they walked, all the way back into the Earth Kingdom proper.

At the Western Air Temple, Aang and Sokka chose a room to share and Katara and Toph each got their pick from the rooms that were left. Zuko was wordlessly left to find his own space. Toph knew no one had told him that there were actual rooms left, nor that he was allowed to use them, but he’d burned her feet so she didn’t waste the energy on caring.

Toph had chosen a room a few floors up, with minimal windows and a nice, uneven floor. She made herself an earthen platform to sleep on and settled in for the night with a happy sigh.

After a few hours of sleep, Toph awoke to a startled realization. She was cold. Hanging from the side of a deep canyon, there wasn’t nearly as much heat radiating from the earth as she was used to, and there was no one warm around to make up for it.

Katara had chosen a room much closer to the fountain (shock of shocks) and to the place that had been agreed on (also wordlessly) as the place where meals would be cooked and the group would commune after work was done for the day.

Toph slowly picked her way downward, filling in gaps with rock where others would’ve had to have enlisted Aang for help across. She didn’t bother knocking on Katara’s door, but paused on the threshold.

“Katara?” she whispered into the dark. “Can I sleep with you?” Katara’s arm lifted in acquiescence.

“Sure, Toph,” she mumbled, muffled by her sleeping bag pillow. “Anything you need.”

**Author's Note:**

> look me up on [tumblr](http://redblooded-disadvantage.tumblr.com/) for stale meta n fresh memes


End file.
